Some thirty artworks have been selected for the sale – a marginal part of the collection – with a global estimate of €20 to 30 million.

THE ART OF COLLECTING: A SHARED PASSION

“We collect art as a passion. Art binds us.”

Wolfgang Titze

The Collection of Anne & Wolfgang Titze is a couple's work, an achievement resulting from a long and stimulating creative dialog between two very distinctive individuals. They are both deeply engaged with intellectually challenging personalities and art movements in a process full of doubts and uncertainties. Researching, reading, visiting artists’ studios are essential to their approach. Anne & Wolfgang Titze are two collectors who know the time it takes to fully understand and recognise the significance of an artwork or an artist. They eagerly confront intellectual complexity, strong subject matter and powerful emotions. The resulting ensemble is at once meticulous and of remarkable breadth. Largely unpublicised for many years, despite multiple loans to prestigious international museums, the collection's immense scope was not revealed to the public until 2014, with Love Story , an exhibition at Vienna’s Belvedere Palace. The museum’s historic galleries were particularly suited to reflect the collection's simultaneous intimacy and authority. The iconic architecture of the Palace justly highlighted the significance of the collection’s position in art history.

“It is a constant quest and an endless struggle.”

Anne Titze

KEY MOMENTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Responding to the globalised art world, the collection of Anne & Wolfgang Titze reflects a wide range of approaches, while remaining focused on some of the most important movements in art history: Minimalism, Contemporary Abstraction, and post-war German painting. The pursuit of pioneering pieces symbolising and embodying key moments in art history is another trait of the collection. Waldstück (Okinawa) is a rare work, epitomising a pivotal moment in the early practice of Gerhard Richter. It marks the artist’s shift from photorealism to abstraction, opening a significant new chapter in his oeuvre. Painted in 1969 and prominently exhibited since, the piece is part of a series of four paintings – one of them currently held at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen. It is the top lot of the sale.

A pioneer, Agnes Martin laid the foundations for the 1950s’ serial painting. Her minimalist abstraction, in its quest of sheer spiritual joy beautifully pairs with a collection “shifting between different levels of intellectual and emotional consciousness”  as stated by Anne Titze. The Lamp (1959, oil on canvas) contains all the early language of the artist.

“These artworks are key to our understanding of the world.”

Wolfgang & Anne Titze

 Her mysticism echoes the meditative repetition of Zen and Taoist practice. On a Clear Day (1973), a pivotal work in the artist’s practice and the only major print portfolio by Martin is also part of the sale.

MAJOR FIGURES IN CONTEMPORARY ART

The story of the collection of Anne & Wolfgang Titze is also rooted in long term relationships and a loyal commitment to gallerists and artists. Among them Georg Baselitz specially features. From this major figure of German post-war art, the sale will feature Wegtreten, der Mantel (2014). Recalling the fragmented compositions Baselitz created in the 1960s, this monumental artwork, expresses a form of protest by the artist by means of

a radical and ceaseless reinvention of painting. The works also conjures the free gestures of Abstract Expressionism and the artist’s Fracture Paintings –questioning German history and identity. Born in Romania in 1977 under the Ceausescu regime, Adrian Ghenie is fascinated by the darkness of recent European history. With the monumental Flight into Egypt (2008), Ghenie transforms a classic biblical narrative of art history into a scene suggesting displacement and exile. Charles Darwin as a Young Man, also by Adrian Ghenie, was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2015 – the very show that brought the artist to international acclaim. His portraits of Darwin, the father of evolutionary biology, reveal much about the artist's approach of history.

“...far away from conventional thinking”

Anne & Wolfgang Titze

MULTIPLE WOMEN ARTISTS

The collection also reflects on contemporary practice in which “women, especially those who talk about women” play an essential role, according to Anne Titze. From Yayoi Kusama to Julie Mehretu, Lisa Yuskavage, Sarah Lucas, Rebecca Warren, Joyce Pensato and Paola Pivi, works by female artists make up a large portion of the sale.

“I have always been interested in women who break down barriers.”

Anne Titze

They include Blue Magic (2007), a work evoking urban space and the complex forces of a global, interconnected society. It is a dynamic example of Julie Mehretu ‘s abstract paintings exploring geopolitics, migration, and conflict.

The sale also features two pieces by Yayoi Kusama . Infinity-Nets (AOTWX), a large-scale painting from 2008, epitomises Kusama's artistic practice of obsessive repetition. DOTS-OBSESSION [QZBA] recalls Kusama’s early links with Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism.